I
completely get the desire to do this. Hell, I wanted to play a "Battle Cleric" so badly I twinked one with a Fungi Tunic, Velium Crystal Staff, and a decent haste item! And on my Shaman (my first character here), the one and only "twink item" I was given by a friend was a Barbarian Spiritist's Hammer. This was back before the proc nerf, so you better believe I was running around meleeing with my Shaman!
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But, as someone who has tried to play two Priest classes as if they were melee, I promise this: it simply doesn't work past level 20 or so. Priests (even ones with great proccing weapons) simply don't do enough melee damage after the n00b levels. Your fights will just get longer and longer, the higher the mobs' level gets; at some point even a Fungi won't be enough to keep you alive anymore ... but even before that you'll switch to using spells, simply because melee damage is so slow.
Also keep in mind, Shaman slow
sucks at low levels. At level 20 you're not even reducing their attack speed by a quarter: even a slowed mob still does 75+% of its damage. So if you try to melee, you'll wind up spending tons of mana on near-worthless slows, roots to take breaks from damage, and heals to fix that damage. And you'll quickly see that it makes
much more sense to root the mob or let your pet tank it, not take any damage at all, and then use the mana for DoTs.
So the real answer here is
YOUR RACE DOES NOT MATTER! If a Fungi won't keep you alive in melee from 20-60, you better believe the (much lower) Troll regeneration won't either. No matter what race you pick, you
will stop meleeing ... so embrace that and pick whatever race you want.
P.S. At latter levels Shaman certainly do melee ... but not because they're doing meaningful melee damage. Once your slow starts reducing melee damage by more than half, you may want to tank mobs again (eg. because they summon, break root frequently, etc.). But again, the melee damage won't matter ... and neither will your race.